In large deployments of managed devices in a facility, such as printers, copiers, scanners and multifunction devices (MFD), it is difficult to track the devices that have been moved, added, or removed from the facility. Further, for large facilities that have multiple floors and/or wings, and many rooms, there may be dozens or even hundreds of machines scattered throughout the facility. Over time, devices may be replaced, new devices may be added, old devices may be removed, and existing devices may be moved from floor to floor, or room to room. For such large deployments of devices, managing the location information for these many devices can be very difficult, and only increases in complexity as time goes on.
Existing methods use a number of approaches to keeping track of devices. For example, some approaches use the geolocation of a deployed device to manage its location, but not all devices that a manager may wish to track are GPS-enabled, and therefore would require the use of the additional equipment each time a device location's was changed. Other approaches involve specific network infrastructures. However, such methods are not very accurate and can result in ambiguities since multiple devices (e.g., multiple printers) may be connected to a network hub, thereby making differentiating between the multiple devices more difficult. Traditional systems tracking this information are not integrated directly with the managed devices and thus depend on human interaction to update the centralized record of device locations. The day-to-day users of these devices are not involved, and the devices themselves often have no knowledge of their absolute or relative location or when there is a change to their location. These methods are not user-friendly, are error prone, and present significant barriers to the effective management of large deployments of devices.